Rafi Siddique

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), was launched recently in the European union and is meant to protect the data of all citizens. This new rule will govern the way in which organizations collect and use data from individuals. This law has been implemented in order to safeguard user’s data. The law was defined in 2016 but implemented recently due to the incidents like Cambridge Analytica.

Most businesses and organizations, especially outside the EU and EEA, haven’t truly grasped the whole law and some are even totally unaware of this new law. If your website relies on data from users and you want to operate in EEA, then you must comply with the GDPR.

Marketing Automation and GDPR

Now, you’d be confused as to how to get started and how to implement everything regarding this new law.

Well it’s quite easy. You can use marketing automation to take care of compliance with GDPR.

If your business relies on data, then marketing automation can help with the following:

●     Generating Better Leads

●     Reducing Cold Calls

●     Engaging Audience with curated content

●     Measuring the Return on Investment

●     Collecting marketing and customer data for further analysis

●     GDPR compliance

All of these benefits of marketing automation will help you in dealing with the most important aspect of GDPR, i.e., TRUST. Ingredients of building trust with your customers, subscribers and prospects falls down to three basic criteria:

●     Creating content that they care about

●     Creating value for them

●     Making them feel safe while they use your services

Let’s look at some of the problems related to collecting and using user data and how automation can provide an elegant solution.

Problem of large Databases

In marketing, we’re all too familiar with the idea of creating data dumps. We collect all the information about a particular visitor / subscriber / customer, even the data that isn’t relevant. This is going to change with GDPR. Now companies will be allowed to only collect data that is relevant to the provided services. So, for example, you’ll not be able to collect a person’s religious or political affiliation and information about their family background while operating a loan service.

How Marketing Automation solves this problem?

With marketing automation, you can record the data submitted by the user and set preferences according to which this data is stored. You can check compliance of collected information with certain automation tools and delete all the redundant data that you don’t need.

Customer’s Consent

No one ever reads the terms and conditions. Right?

Well, now companies are required to inform users specifically about the way in which collected data will be used. Apart from this, restrictions have been set on how this data can be used.

Also, all your users must have the option to quit using your services anytime they want to.

How Marketing Automation solves this problem?

Marketing automation enables you to automatically show each user what type of data is collected regarding them and how that data will be used. Also, they’ll have the option to opt out of this if you configure the tool properly. Most automation tools now provide such functionality through which you can record the preferences of users.

Proof

Also, getting permission is one thing, proving that you got the permission is another. With automation tool, whenever a user opts in and allows you to collect and use data, the proof for the same is stored automatically.

Standard Security

Many small and medium sized companies regularly failed to secure data of users as they viewed security as a redundant expense. Now security has to be of prime importance. Certain guidelines have been set in place by GDPR with which all companies collecting user’s data must company.

How Marketing Automation solves this problem?

You automation tool can scan the database and find various loops through which the database can be penetrated. This will enable you to know about almost all of the things you need to secure.

Most important of all…Building Trust

With the collected data, automation tools can associate preferences of users with their contact details. This will enable you to automatically provide each user with content that they care about. Hence by providing value to them, you’ll be able to gain their trust.